Overture
Overture Search Engine Analysis
Overture is now Yahoo!
Overture is THE pay per click search engine.
First, GoTo.com is now Overture. The site seems identical in every way except some minor design changes. Maybe they plan to transition the look and functionality of the site slowly.
It was always a bit difficult to get your site listed on GoTo.com for free, but there was a time...
A couple years ago, you could send an email to addurl@goto.com, and wait. Eventually you would see your site listed. We were able to successfully list many sites that way. Still, that was a long time ago, and Overture has been THE pay per click website for quite a while now.
Buying a top 3 listing for a keyword phrase on Overture gets you listed on many of the Internet's top portals.
Up until the beginning of 2000, you could bid as little as one cent for a click-through, but now the minimum is a nickel. The problem is that many searches aren't going to return a nickel on your investment. Without much fanfare, Overture raised the minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.10 effective February 6, 2003. Those who's bids fell between 5 and 9 cents will be grandfathered in for the time being. People who were already grandfathered in from the last time Overture raised the minimum (grandfathered 1 to 4 cent listings) will be required to move to the new grandfathered class and bid a minimum of 5 cents as of March 29, 2003. Overture can be a terrific investment (we've used them), but you have to be very careful about where you invest the money - track your visitors to see what searches turn into buyers.
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Overture NewsFlash February 18, 2003 - Overture announced that it has come to an agreement for the purchase of AltaVista. Read the release: Overture.com. February 25, 2003 - Overture announced that it has come to an agreement for the purchase of the Web search unit of Fast/AllTheWeb, leaving Fast/AllTheWeb with just the corporate enterprise search unit.Read the release: Overture.com. July 14, 2003 - Yahoo! and Overture announced this morning that they had closed a deal under which Yahoo! will acquire Overture outright for $4.75 in cash plus 0.6108 in shares of Yahoo! stock for each share of Overture stock. The deal is being valued at 1.63 billion dollars and will complete in the fourth quarter of this year.Read: Yahoo! Acquires Overture. October 7, 2003 - Yahoo! completed its purchase of Overture Services, Inc. today for approximately 1.83 billion dollars in stock and cash.Read: Yahoo! and Overture Announce Completion of Acquisition. |
Overture Search Engine Analysis
URL:
http://www.overture.com/
FREE ADD URL:
None
THE KEY:
Do a ROI analysis before buying any traffic.
DIRECTORY:
Like DogPile, Overture does not maintain a directory. What appears to be a directory is really a bunch of shortcut searches with paid results.
SEARCH RESULTS:
Overture provides its own paid listings then listings from the Inktomi database when an exact paid match isn't available.
RELATIONSHIPS:
Overture & AltaVista (Top 3 Overture listings appear with titles and descriptions at the top under a heading "Products and Services".) Overture & America Online (Top 3 Overture listings appear at the top with just titles under a heading called "Sponsored Links" with a disclaimer "Provided by a third party and not endorsed by AOL.) - Overture replaced by Google AdWords.
Overture & Lycos (Top 3 Overture listings appear at the top with titles and truncated descriptions under a heading called "Featured Listings".)
Overture & InfoSpace (Infospace is Dogpile, which starts with Overture listings.) Overture & Netscape (Top 2 Overture listings appear at the top with titles and descriptions under a heading called "Partner Search Results". They are followed by "Reviewed Web Sites".) - Overture replaced by Google AdWords.
Overture & HotBot (Top 3 Overture listings appear at the top with titles and truncated descriptions under a heading called "Featured Listings".)
Overture & iWon (The first five to ten search results are GoTo.com / Overture listings and appear with titles and descriptions under the heading, "FEATURED LISTINGS (No entries for clicking on these links.)")
Overture & MSN (The top five Overture bidders appear in a box at the right hand side of the page under the heading, "SPONSORED SITES.")
Overture & Yahoo! (Top 3 Overture listings appear at the top under a heading called, "Sponsor Matches". The listings feature titles and approximately 40 character truncated descriptions.)